>> pelley: tonight, can they fix washington now? the politicians who brought us gridlock are reelected. >> tonight you voted for action, not politics as usual. >> let's rise above the dysfunction and do the right thing together for our country. >> pelley: reports from nancy cordes, dean reynolds and anthony mason. a countdown begins to automatic tax increases and huge budget cuts. wyatt andrews on the fiscal cliff. a nor'easter bears down on shores ravaged by sandy. ben tracy is there. we'll have the forecast. >> i don't know if we can mentally handle another storm. >> pelley: and one secret to the president's success was the changing face of america. anna werner on the new voters

who helped push him over the top. captioning sponsored by cbs this is the "cbs evening news" with scott pelley. >> pelley: good evening. this is a special one-hour edition. $6 billion was spent on political campaigns and when they were over nothing much changed. republicans will still control the house, democrats the senate, and barack obama will still be president. this was the scene tonight as the president and the first family returned from chicago aboard air force one. they landed at joint base andrews right outside washington, d.c we will have a look at what you can expect from washington many the future, but first the latest returns. we still can't project a winner the presidential contest in florida, but even without florida mr. obama has 303 electoral votes-- well over the 270 needed for victory. mitt romney ended up with 206.

this is the popular vote total. they're still counting, but the president is ahead by nearly three million votes. in his victory celebration last night, the president said "the best is yet to come." he's been calling congressional leaders, and both the president and republican house speaker john boehner are talking about a new spirit of cooperation. but there are battles ahead and we have a team of correspondents covering this fresh start with old players in washington. first, nancy cordes with the president. >> reporter: the president and his family boarded air force one in chicago this afternoon after a visit to campaign headquarters where president obama embraced his campaign manager, jim messina, and elated staffers and volunteers. despite all the talk beforehand of a razor tight race, in the end president obama captured all but two of the states he won in

2008. i just spoke with governor romney and i congratulated him and paul ryan on a hard-fought campaign. (applause) we may have battled fiercely, but it's only because we love this country deeply and we care so strongly about its future. >> reporter: before a cheering crowd of thousands in south chicago, president obama laid out an ambitious second-term agenda: deficit reduction, tax code reform, immigration reform, and energy independence. big goals that have inspired and divided the two parties for decades. >> we are not as divided as our politics suggest. we're not as cynical as the pundits believe. we are greater than the sum of our individual ambitions and we remain more than a collection of red states and blue states. we are and forever will be the united states of america!

>> reporter: but he acknowledged that this bruising campaign, with its billion-dollar barrage of negative ads had left hard feelings that he hoped to overcome. >> and whether i earned your vote or not, i have listened to you. i have learned from you. and you've made me a better president. and with your stories and your struggles i return to the white house more determined and more inspired than ever about the work there is to do and the future that lies ahead. (cheers and applause) >> reporter: the president will not have much time to savor his victory. the most pressing issue on his plate is the fiscal cliff-- that toxic mix of steep spending cuts and tax increases set to go into effect at the end of the year. economists have warned that it could plunge the country into another recession but republicans and democrats, scott, have put off negotiating for a solution in earnest for months because they've been awaiting the outcome of this

election. >> pelley: nancy, we were talking in the newsroom today about major cabinet changes that are expected. >> reporter: that's right. two of the president's top cabinet secretaries have indicated they would like to step down at the end of this first term, secretary of state hillary clinton and treasury secretary tim geithner. now they won't be likely leaving right away. the president will have to choose successors and they will have to go through senate confirmation hearings so it could be the start of the new year before they debart. >> pelley: nancy, thanks very much. we mentioned a moment ago that florida is undecided. here's the latest: more than eight million votes were cast and between the two there are only 50,000 between the candidates. the president is leading by a little over 50,000 votes there. in his victory speech last night, the president said that he had "the best campaign team and volunteers in the history of politics." you could forgive him for the hyperbole, but there is no

arguing with the success. here's dean reynolds. >> (laughs) four more years, baby. >> reporter: in ohio, the foot soldiers of the obama campaign packed up today and headed back to their lives. volunteers from as far away as washington, d.c. >> bye, ohio! >> reporter: the seemingly ever-present face of the campaign here and the other battlegrounds had been micromanaged by the architects of the 2008 victory: david axelrod, the president's trusted advisor, david plouffe, a senior strategist, and national campaign manager jim messina. >> the high point was this weekend. 5.2 million doors we knocked on just this weekend. 18 months of building it for this moment and watching our neighborhood team leaders take it over and say "it's our campaign." >> reporter: a high-tech trove of demographic data including stuff like a voter's favorite t.v. show fueled calls and blazed trails not just to neighborhoods but to specific homes and individuals inside them.

in ohio, 21,000 volunteers worked at campaigns last weekend. the spearhead of 139 field offices statewide. mitt romney had 40. chris redfern is chairman of ohio's democrats. >> we have an intimate relationship with the voters we're focusing on. that door knock, that screen door door knock, that occurs not once, twice, three times but four and five times over the sum interthe fall. >> reporter: when necessary, the approach was low tech, scooping strangers off the street and driving them to the polls to build an early voting lead. >> you going to early vote? >> yeah. >> reporter: then there was the ad blitz that began this summer. >> we all just lost our jobs. >> reporter: defined mitt romney as an exploitative businessman unconcerned about the middle-class. >> hi, how are you? >> reporter: but jim messina said ultimately it was the face-to-face contact that sealed the deal. >> we invested in the grass-roots and for a year people said, you know, why are they spending so much money in these states and we were helping

local people build a volunteer grass-roots army out there to talk to their friends. >> reporter: now, that kind of contact worked very well for the president with early voters here, scott, and it staked himtor a more than 200,000 vote lead in that category. >> pelley: it certainly worked, dean, thanks very much. all day long yesterday we were talking to voters as they left the polls all across the country. anthony mason is in studio 57. anthony, what did the voters tell us about why they voted the way they did? >> reporter: scott, the president built his reelection victory around the same coalition that put him in the white house four years ago. we saw a pronounced gender gap in our exit polls. governor romney won men by seven percentage points but president obama won women by an even wider margin, 55% to 44%. now, the president's support among white voters did decline, but he increased his margins among hispanics, taking 71% of the hispanic vote and a bigger margin, 93%, of the african

american vote. but this wasn't just about demographics. we asked voters who is more in touch with teem like them. president obama came out on top here by 53% to 43%. and more than half of the voters we talked to said they saw mitt romney's policies as favoring the rich. only about a third said they favored the middle-class. governor romney campaigned as a business leader who could create jobs and fix the economy. but when we asked who'd do a better job of handling the economy, romney ended up with only about a one-point advantage here, 49% to 48%. so the president effectively neutralized the economy issue which had been thought to be so dangerous for him. scott? >> pelley: anthony, thanks very much. as nancy cordes was just telling us, we're about seven weeks from those automatic tax increases and budget cuts that are due to kick in automatically. congress design the so-called fiscal cliff to be so painful that it would force a compromise between the white house and capitol hill. but the voters have returned the

same politicians wh politicianst reach a deal last time. here's wyatt andrews. >> just weeks away from now loom it is so-called fiscal cliff. >> reporter: under pressure from the fiscal cliff, house speaker john boehner started a public negotiation with the president. saying republicans would accept an increase in tax revenues if they're tied to tax and entitlement reform. day one after the election and the speaker said it was clear voters want solutions. >> mr. president, this is your moment. we're ready to be led. >> reporter: but what sounded like a concession was mostly a challenge. boehner specifically rejected the way the president would raise revenues: higher taxes on upper-income americans. >> feeding the growth of government through higher tax rates won't help us solve the problem. >> reporter: the president's plan to ask more of the wealthy wealthy-- what he calls the balanced approach to deficit reduction-- was his core argument in the campaign and central to his mandate. he made that clear in this interview with the "cbs evening

news" in september. >> the message that will be sent by voters this time out if i'm reelected will be we're not satisfied with the pace of progress but we do think that the ideas the president has presented are the right ones and we'd like to see greater cooperation. >> reporter: one year ago, in the summer of 2011 these same two men-- the speaker and the president-- worked for weeks on what was known as the grand bargain. the president offered tax reform and $4 trillion in deficit reductions if boehner could sell republicans on that upper income tax increase. boehner could not and what resulted instead were the outlines of the fiscal cliff. the speaker is now floating the idea of a different grand bargain. scott, the idea is to delay the entire fiscal cliff for a year to give congress the time to work on tax and entitlement reform. >> pelley: wyatt, thanks, john dickerson is our cbs news

political director. you just heard what wyatt said. does that sound like the beginning of progress? >> well, the president and republican leaders are talking about cooperation and after the 2010 election there was a flurry of activity. one thing that's changed that might suggest both sides can work together is that because the president's no longer up for reelection republicans can work with him and know they're not helping his political fortunes. now, they still have to calculate their own political fortunes, and that's under way. the election was just yesterday. let's look at mitch mcconnell, the leader of the republicans in the senate. he's got a reelection in 2014. does he cooperate because he's up for reelection or does he not cooperate because he's worried about a conservative primary challenge? john boehner, the house leader, he might want to cooperate but he's got 230 plus republicans all of whom are taking a different message from this election, some of whom were reelected because they said they don't want to cooperate. the president's motivation, he wants to get this so-called fiscal cliff out of the way so he can work on the bigger issues nancy talked about: energy,

immigration. so that's what motivates him. in the end, the players didn't change. the question is whether their motivations did. >> pelley: john, thank you very much. the big story in the northeast wasn't politics today but the nor'easter that just blew in. the same places that were swamped by sandy are getting lashed tonight by high winds, rain, snow, and an angry sea that threatens to flood the shoreline all over again. more evacuations have been ordered and new jersey governor chris christie may have had the best line when he said that he was waiting for the locusts and the pestilence next. more than 600,000 homes and businesses in six states are still without power nine days after sandy. that number may grow with tonight's storm. ben tracy is on the new jersey shore. >> reporter: today in belmar, city crews rushed to rebuild the sand dunes wiped out by hurricane sandy. how much faith do you have in this wall? >> you know, we did this for

sandy it would have just -- it would have been laughed at by the waves. >> reporter: but the belmont mayor hopes the new barriers will be enough to keep the nor'easter from flooding his town again. for the past week, belmar has been pumping out 60,000 gallons of water per minute. the pumps will stay on during this second storm. >> we want to be aggressive about protecting our community from anything that this storm brings to us. >> reporter: further south in brick township, the mayor ordered the evacuation of nearly 10,000 people. >> after what people just went through, i would think most people will not stay. >> reporter: what's your plan? the delorenzos stayed through sandy but they're leaving this time. their home is barely livable. >> i don't know if we can mentally handle another storm. it was terrifying. we're the only people on this whole block. >> reporter: for two days, front loaders have been hauling away sandy's wreckage so this storm doesn't blow it back through town. more than two million people in new jersey have had their power restored since sandy, but 60

mile per hour winds could put many of them back in the dark. steve hasn't had power for ten days but he still plans to stay. the mayor is telling everyone it's time to go. what do you say to him? >> i say there's been many, many, many nor'easters that we've had here. we can't run from this one. i won't be going. i'll be staying. >> reporter: as if the wind and the rain weren't bad enough, now the folks along the jersey shore are dealing with this. late this afternoon, the temperatures here dropped to about 32 degrees and the snow is coming down pretty good. scott, this is adding insult to injury for the folks tonight with no electricity and no heat. >> pelley: ben, thank you very much. hispanics played a big role in the president's reelection last night. we'll look at why so many of them did not vote republican when this one-hour edition of the "cbs evening news" continu continues. [

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efforts like this one helped president obama beat mitt romney among hispanic voters by 3-1 in nevada, costing the republicans the white house. >> they think about us like a second thought. like, oh, we need to have hispanics, we may not be able to win. >> reporter: this las vegas businessman, a republican for 40 years, says many his n his party businessman, a republican for 40 years, says many his n his party need to learn to reach out, too, and soften their stance on immigration such as on programs to give illegal immigrants permission to work if they were brought to the u.s. as children. right now as it stands, do you believe there are enough republicans who belief in compromise on immigration? >> well, i want to believe that we believe. >> reporter: do you believe it right now? >> yes, because if i don't believe it i wouldn't be able to be a republican. >> reporter: in florida, colorado, and nevada, the percentage of the electorate that is hispanic has increased one percentage point or more in the last four years. by 2016, at least two million

more latinos will be eligible to vote. the obama campaign went out of its way to reach hispanics, airing this add in key markets. (president obama speaking spanish) it's that sensitivity that they say was missing from the romney campaign. >> we just want to be taken seriously. today we showed that them that -- we demanded at the ballot box -- they can't ignore us. we're here, we're voting, we're paying attention. >> reporter: to get a sense of the numbers here, scott, that national association of latino officials tells us that every 30 seconds in this country a latino citizen turns 18 years of age. that adds some 50,000 new potential voters in the latino community every single month. >> pelley: anna, thanks very much. this man's video triggered protests across the arab world. why he's headed to jail next.

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>> pelley: the california man whose antiislamic video triggered protests across the arab world was sentenced to one year in prison today. a judge ruled that 55-year-old bacile yousef violated the terms of his probation on a bank fraud conviction. he wasn't supposed to use the internet, but he posed the 13-minute video online. we have the results of some

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[ voice of dennis ] indeed. are you in good hands? coming up next on 9news at 7:00 we're still tracking the nor'easter, could still see snow, rain and wind, update coming up. chief washington correspondent and anchor of "face the nation" is joining us now. bob, i wonder what you've been reflecting on after the president's reelection. >> well, first, that it is finally done, scott. the president, who road a wave of hope to a historic victory in 2008 has been returned to office in an election of a different kind. unlike his first election, this one was not won on lofty goals and sometimes unrealistic expectations. this was a tactical victory. as the "washington post" observed, he ran a partisan campaign to secure more time to find bipartisanship. it won't be easy, but there must

be a reset in relations between the white house and congress. the problems are so severe neither side can resolve them without help from the other. perhaps the way new jersey republican governor chris christie and the president worked together to help the hurricane victims can be the example that reminds washington what it seems to have forgotten: doing the right thing is usually the best politics. in the hard world of american politics, the president did not get a mandate yesterday. what americans gave him was a second chance. >> pelley: bob, thanks for being the key to our coverage last night. some cbs stations will be leaving us now for their regular local programming. but for many of you, this special expanded edition of the "cbs evening news" will continue in a moment.

this is 9 news now. waiting for the locusts and pestilence next. >> it is literally a nightmare scenario for victims of superstorm sandy and residents already seeing snow and high winds. this neighborhood in rockaway beach queens already devastated is under evacuation orders, but some resident, even those without heat or electricity, are saying we won't go. >> we've been through this eight or nine days now. we're not going anywhere. >> we'll hope that works out for them. meantime hundreds of evacuees in ocean port, new jers,